


Complimentary Business Cards and More

by orphan_account



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Alternate Universe - Models, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:58:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And Chuck stays stopped because Mike Chilton looks like New York and feels like Detroit.</i> [the genderswapped model!au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complimentary Business Cards and More

Her portfolio was never meant to make it onto a desk in Kane’s NYC offices. Her portfolio was, in fact, never meant to _exist_. After all, portfolios were for artists and movie stars. Chuck, with her scratchy throat and body-shaking sneezes (compliments of a dozen summer allergens), was decidedly neither. Chuck was a Trader Joe’s check-out girl with an admittedly pleasant, if at times too toothy, smile. Not an artist.  
  
Definitely not a movie star.  
  
“Which is why your face made its way to a _modeling_ agency, hello,” Ruby says over the sound of her own frantic waxing. Blemishes on her trademark golden circlet (+2 constitution) were never tolerated for long. “Though we could shop you out to Hollywood, too. You know how many B-listers are babes these days?”  
  
“ _Come_ now, childling,” the Oracle interjects, the force of his slightly nasally voice completely overcoming that of Chuck’s incredibly nasally sneeze. “What breed of _monsters_ do you think us to _be_? We are not _exploiting_ our dear queen’s newfound _hotness_ to tap into the great pool of ladies and courtesans and _princesses_ out in there in the grand world of, what’s that word— _fashion_?”  
  
“Well, _you’re_ not, Ariel.” Ruby moves on to her next piece of armor, a newly conquered half plate that needed a thorough shine. “I on the other hand would like my front row tickets to your first show sent to _chaotically_ dash _indifferent_ at aol dot com. When do you suppose you’ll be introducing me to that lovely co-worker of yours? The one that’ll make a forest guardian.”  
  
The Oracle straightens at that, as much as one named _the Oracle_ can ever straighten. “Oh, yes. Yes, our _dearest_ queen. In dire times such as these, we must make do with our _meager_ numbers. Sometimes the queen must serve as the scout. Your _mission_ , to seek out new allies, is of _utmost_ importance.”  
  
Ruby nods as she squints and scratches at an invisible scratch. “Allies of _hotness_.”  
  
Chuck emits a sharp, hysterical sound. She puts her head in her hands and quietly contemplates self-regicide.  
  


* * *

_Complimentary Business Cards and More_  
the genderswapped model!au  
chuck, mike, et al.

* * *

  
Chuck blames the public school budget, really.  
  
Around and during finals week, the local state university receives a visit from a troupe of travelling de-stress puppies. Six jolly golden retrievers prance around the quad, bringing joy and good times to every biochem major contemplating death by hydrogen peroxide and every history major scouring eBay for cyanide that is no more than a decade past its expiration date. Even apartment dogs, cooped up inside for the week as their walkers attempt to sear dozens of pages of notes into their brain, get to come out and have a frolic with a new pack of friends.  
  
High school juniors get no such privilege and the honors chem final is no walk in the park. (Maybe a walk in a puppy-less, lich-infested park of _terror_ —but definitely no normal walk in the normal park.) The student council files an annual petition to incept the tradition of a puppy visit day, or maybe a kitten visit day, or even a beta fish visit day during finals week. The administration responds with an annual, “We are sorry, but this activity does not fall under the category of acceptable expenses with our current budget allocation.”  
  
And thus, after some years of passive-aggressive teenage scowling, a particularly proactive student body president incepted the De-Lich the Park de-stress LARPing event instead.  
  
This was not the problem. Chuck loved De-Lich-ing things. Chuck, with the right allergy medication in play, even loved the park. Chuck mostly loved not having to admit to the entire student body that she would become deathly ill in the presence of puppies and hysterically terrified in the presence of kittens—and beta fish just don’t _sound_ like good news. (By proxy, she also loved that genius student body president, but as some sort of Steve Jobs success-alike ten years her senior, things just didn’t work out between them.)  
  
Then the principal who had been embezzling large sums of money from the school’s annual budget retired comfortably in a small island with no extradition treaty with the US and the new principal, who had great qualifications and _morals_ of all things, happily gave Puppy Day 2012 a green light. This caused a great deficiency in players for the De-Lich the Park event, which wouldn’t have been a problem (the players who had arrived all loved a challenge) had it not also caused a great deficiency in the Lich population.  
  
In their stead were six fat, happy puppies and the entire triumphant student body.  
  
“That basket case in my film appreciation class was petting one of them in his Lich mask. _In_ his Lich mask. The most well-behaved litter of golden labs ever born are rolling around the lawn in the park and we’re here.” Ruby sighed as she hugged the wall near Chuck’s living room AC vent. “All because of our sensitive Queen Vanqui-snot.”  
  
Chuck, confined to solitary on the armchair, sneezed. “I’m sorry! You _can_ go back out there. I’m the only one who’s allergic to—to everything awesome and cute. I won’t mind!”  
  
“That’s only, duh, _preposterous_?” Ruby raised her sword to the ceiling. “How could I, noble Darkslayer, leave my queen alone in this time of darkness? With a legion of _liches_ terrorizing the kingdom?”  
  
Chuck adjusted the bobby pins that kept her bangs from falling into her eyes and sweating her into oblivion. “We don’t have the park this year, Rubes. You don’t have to stay in character.”  
  
The AC slows to a stop, leaving the room in an excruciatingly foreboding silence before, suddenly: “Ex _cuse_ me?”  
  
Chuck held her hands up in quick surrender. “No! I mean, I’m sorry!”  
  
“That’s _right_ you’re sorry, your _majesty_ ,” Ruby said. “In fact, I’d say an apology is exactly what’s in order.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Chuck said and sniffled. She crossed her fingers at her sides and hoped the third time will be the charm. “My humblest apologies, noble Darkslayer.”  
  
“Oh, _no_. This won’t do at all.”  
  
As it turns out, Chuck was not quite so lucky on that day. Ruby refused the apology and declared the loyal peons of the kingdom were the ones who deserved an apology from their queen, who chose to be absent on a day of such celebration during a tedious age (read: week) of war. Chuck unsmartly pointed out that said loyal peons were otherwise occupied at the moment and was subsequently sent on a quest to find the mystical Polaroid camera her foster parents sent home from overseas for her last birthday.  
  
The Queen’s Speech of 2012 was thus documented in snaps of Chuck looking suitably apologetic against the regally white backdrop of her bedroom door. All was forgiven, six puppies and a thousand high schoolers were made happy, and this too did not seem like it would be the problem.  
  
Little did Chuck know that when she pinned her bangs back and stayed on the proper allergy medication, her mildly anemic self looked quite—good. Little did Chuck know that Ruby knew this fact _very_ well and planned on utilizing said fact in the procurement of a new, beautiful forest guardian who was currently, and wrongly, preoccupied with being a quasi-famous professional fashion model.  
  
Chuck _would_ blame Ruby seeing as it was _Ruby_ who, posing as Chuck’s legal adult guardian, submitted an electronic application with her queenly photographs and personal information to Kane Models, a Google proclaimed famous model management agency, just so Chuck could potentially introduce Ruby at some future date to a model she had come to fancy—but Ruby’s sword had a +5 enhancement bonus and she’d proven on several occasions that she has a certain penchant for mutiny.  
  
And Chuck would blame the puppies, but they were _puppies_.  
  
So Chuck blames the public school budget. The extremely, unfairly fickle public school budget.  
  
Six weeks later in the dead of summer with a broken AC and all three of those six puppies adopted out to Chuck’s closest friends, Chuck tries her level best to not sneeze her nose off while Ruby cuddles an ice pack and laughs over the unbelievably positive, and also humiliating, voice message Chuck’s home phone blared out over its speakers.  
  
It _was_ pretty funny that they were inviting her to New York for a meet and greet with the team, and it was borderline hilarious that they thought she and her perfectly dispersed freckles would be a perfect addition to the team once she addressed the issue of her mild underbite.  
  
It was slightly less funny when an email with a prepaid, roundtrip plane ticket from Detroit to New York, New York appeared in Chuck’s inbox.  
  
Then, suddenly, it stops being at all funny as Chuck watches the ground pull away as flight 1378 of Delta Airlines takes off.  
  
  
  
Of all the things Chuck is allergic to, New York City seems to not be one of them. While Ruby’s, “It’s hot, there’s no AC, and you lost your queenship in last week’s scrimmage—what do you have to lose?” had stopped being a compelling reason to board the plane once on the plane, the surprisingly clear sinuses Newark Airport greets her with is enough to make Chuck forget, momentarily, why she questioned Ruby’s logic at all.  
  
Then a shuttle bus nearly hip-checks her. She screams a little and remembers.  
  
The taxi she finally manages to get in is so old it may not be street-legal (and definitely has no seatbelts in the back, _why_ are there no seatbelts in the back). Chuck mumbles a few Hail Marys and names a few other deities for good measure until the deathtrap rolls to a stop in front of an intimidatingly tall building.  
  
Stepping out, Chuck breathes in and allows herself a look around. Correction: an intimidatingly tall _city_. (Though Detroit could, maybe, take it out with its scrappiness.)  
  
She hears herself stammer a question out to the doorman, and she registers the answer on some astral plane of mental being. (“9th floor, honey. Good luck!”) An unknown force, most probably a combination of Ruby’s insistence and Chuck’s own morbid curiosity (though she’d prefer to think of it as _blossoming daring_ and _determination towards self-betterment_ ), propels her forward and into the an elevator which lifts her up nine stories without letting her plummet to her doom.  
  
That force putters out and she slows to a stop in front of a desk guarding a receptionist who must moonlight as a model by the look of her. In fact, every who’d crammed themselves into that elevator with Chuck (save one extremely-harried, slightly-greasy man with a stack of papers) looked like they _must_ work here.  
  
Chuck catches a glimpse of herself in the reflective surface of the desk and cringes. Although she looked pleasing _enough_ , no one she passed look quite as plain and unassuming as she did now. What _doesn’t_ she have to lose?  
  
“Miss?”  
  
Chuck startles. “Yes! I!”  
  
The excessively pretty receptionist tilts her head. “You—?”  
  
“I think I have an appoint with a Mrs Rayon? Or a Mr Rayon?”  
  
The excessively pretty receptionist smiles. “ _Just_ Rayon. Down the hall to my left. Third door’s the one you’ll want.”  
  
Chuck works up a nervous laugh, says, “Roger,” and immediately forgets the directions. She strikes out anyway and encounters a gurgling water cooler before finding her way to the right path. It’s a short hike that feels as though it stretches out forever, or at least long enough for her to make her way through the following itinerary of thoughts:

  1. She should be home challenging the upstart punk who won her crown to a battle to the death for—a monarchy she’s happy to relinquish?
  2. She at least  shouldn’t be going along with this ridiculous plan.
  3. Who would really keep her around and get all buddy-like with her once they found out she wasn’t _actually_ a model, or model material, or even faintly unawkward?
  4. As if she would use this unsolicited yet surprisingly refreshing and welcome opportunity to make new friends for the sole purpose of inviting her old, and completely inappropriate, friends over to gawk at.
  5. Should she be welcoming this opportunity at all?
  6. Her underbite isn’t _really_ that bad, is it?
  7. God, it totally is.
  8. Is this the third door or the fourth?



She draws in a breath, draws up her slack jaw, and knocks on both doors. The one to her left is the only one to swing open. A severe-looking suit regards her from above a pair of indoor sunglasses. (Chuck takes a beat to process the phrase _indoor sunglasses_.)  
  
“He-ey! Just Rayon?”  
  
It must come out less shakily than she expected it to, because it earns her a tight nod and teeny smile. She follows Just Rayon inside when beckoned.

  1. Since when was her life following strange men into strange rooms in strange cities with really strange intentions? There’s independent foster kid, and then there’s just _silly_.



“It’s good to see you’ve made it here.” Just Rayon settles down behind the imposing desk in the room as Chuck drops into the only remaining seating option. “Did you have a hard time finding the office?”  
  
Chuck shakes her head, mutely.  
  
“Have your parents flown in with you?”  
  
Again, she shakes her head.  
  
“Is this your first time in the city?”  
  
Chuck nods. Just Rayon stands. The interview is over before Chuck knows it began.  
  
The rest of the morning is spent dropping Chuck’s things (“I was supposed to bring _things_?”) off at her complimentary hotel room and discussing rates-per-job in a jargony language she doesn’t understand. Just Rayon’s voice is at least soothing, if not sensical, and Chuck finds herself going through the motions with a surreal sense of calm.  
  
Even so, Just Rayon doesn’t even start making sense until they’re dropped off in front of a rather sizable, but funnily squat, studio of some sort.  
  
“Alright, rather than talk, we’ll run you through a day in the life of.”  
  
Immediately, Chuck tenses. Back ramrod straight, she shuffles in behind Just Rayon as the doors open for them.  
  
“This is a Deluxe shoot. You won’t be working with them with your look, but you’ll be able to see how things are done.”  
  
Chuck waits for Just Rayon to continue, expectantly. Just Rayon seems to be doing the same. Chuck swallows the dry lump forming in her throat and begins, “So, I—.”  
  
Just Rayon’s hand shoots up, gesturing at someone in the distant mesh of bodies and lights. Chuck can make out the turning of a few heads if she squints and the impossibly tall frame of someone pulling away from the set to migrate towards them.  
  
“Any more questions?” Just Rayon asks, as though Chuck’s asked _any_ questions prior to this moment.  
  
Chuck says, “Well, actually,” and stops when Just Rayon rolls a shoulder at the frame that joins them and says, “Mike Chilton.”  
  
And Chuck stays stopped because Mike Chilton looks like New York and feels like Detroit. Her hair is tame and perfect with bangs that don’t obstruct her vision and make her a danger to stationary trees in the DMV parking lot. Her teeth are straight and white in a manufactured way, but her smile is warm like the sun in the park without the sting of pollen in the air. She has four limbs that go on for miles, only a few less miles than Chuck’s own, but not at all gangly in the same way as they spill neatly out of the pantsuit she’s displaying (because _wearing_ doesn’t feel quite like the right word when describing the relationship between Mike Chilton and the clothes on her body).  
  
She says, “Hey.”  
  
Before Chuck can say something along the lines of _um_ , Just Rayon says, “No more questions?”  
  
“Um,” Chuck now says. To start, she considers asking what she should do when her apparent mentor-to-be reduces her to a nervous pile of clichés. Or maybe what she should do when someone with eyes realizes she doesn’t look or behave anything like Mike Chilton.  
  
“Great,” Just Rayon says. “You ladies have a ball.”  
  
“Um!” Chuck says, louder. No one appears to pay the very obvious cry for help any mind because Just Rayon just leaves and Mike laughs.  
  
“First time in the city?”  
  
Chuck silently recites the alphabet in an attempt to keep her grasp on basic English in the face of this tall, modern Xena warrior princess. “Yeah. Yep. Yes! Lots of first times today. That’s definitely one of ‘em! Mike?”  
  
Mike smiles again and it’s warmer than before (or, at least, Chuck’s freckles are). “Is a boy’s name, I know, _but_ it’s also a syllable shorter than Michelle or Mikey and Rayon’s all for time management. Chuck?”  
  
Chuck tries not to wobble, but Mike is the face of intimidation—and apparently Deluxe. She thinks she must stammer through, “Yep, it’s Chuck alright, as in short of Charlie. Though they’re both boy names, huh? I mean, generally speaking. Not always! Obviously. Because I’m Chuck. Hey. Hi,” but it all comes out fairly intact and coherent. Somehow.  
  
“Hey,” Mike says again, doing a bang up job of emulating via sound just how dopey Chuck feels—but Mike is still smiling and her intentions seem not at all malicious. “Hey, come on. I’ll introduce you.”  
  
In her ensuing hour-long daze, Chuck meets a designer in the high fashion industry who Mike calls Jacob and a friend, a stoic model in the middle of her process (with this mildly green around the gills, and just generally green, look to her that suggests she must be the forest guardian of Ruby’s mostly inappropriate dreams) who Mike calls Kaia and a co-worker, and a whole slew of photographers and light-bringers grumbling under their breath about some absent prima donna going by the Duchess.  
  
Along with the new names and faces that Chuck stores away in her swelling memory banks, she absently (or intently, whichever) registers the apparently natural and effortless _swoosh_ of Mike’s hips when she turns, the quaint dip in her tone when she warmly regards someone as _buddy_ , the weight of her arm around Chuck’s shoulders as she turns them to smile for a candid behind the scenes shot—and so on.  
  
Also cemented deep (and Chuck would think irrevocably) in her mind was the thought that there had to be some sort of mistake here. After all, she trips over girls in dresses, knocks over expensive tripods boasting even pricier tech, and talks way too fast when nervous. She wasn’t beautiful and elegant and suave to boot. She was no Mike. She would never be a Mike.  
  
“Still with me, Chuckles?”  
  
“Huh?” Chuck blinks. The spot on the back of Mike’s neck she had been staring at has suddenly become Mike’s chin. “Oh! Yeah, hah, you called me Chuckles because my name is Chuck. That’s funny!”  
  
Mike rubs a hand against the back of her neck, almost sheepishly. “Don’t care for it?”  
  
Chuck shoves her bangs up and shakes her head, eyes wide and serious. “No, I like it. I do! I wasn’t _expecting_ it, of course, but I like it.”  
  
Mike looks bemused, briefly, then faintly amused as she gestures towards the front doors. “Let’s head out for a bite. There’s a place down the block that does great wheatgrass smoothies.”  
  
After a small, horrified pause, Chuck begins to nod gamely, if slowly, until Mike laughs.  
  
“Kidding, Chuck. There’s a deli in walking distance that does great sandwiches.”  
  
Chuck, after taking a moment to mourn the loss of Chuckles, follows.  
  
  
  
Over lunch, Chuck laughs and relaxes more than she thought possible under her current extenuating and bizarre circumstances. Several things come to light: Mike is one of Kane’s top-earning model, Mike is slated to be a character reference in the next Laser Swords game, and Chuck is not so good at the whole concept of balance due to a childhood foot-related (or, more specifically, _toe_ -related) accident.  
  
And—.  
  
“You’re from Detroit?” Mike goes radiant as she picks up the check with a company card and slips back into the shoes she’d toed off under the table. “Me too! How’s the Motor City looking these days?”  
  
“Oh, like a dead and empty shell of itself.” Chuck tries to gulp the words back down a second too late. “I mean—.”  
  
Mike interrupts with her nicest laugh. “That sounds about right. I’ve been meaning to get back for a while now, but—.”  
  
Chuck smartly does not pursue the pause, but instead says, “Suburbia’s not so bad. That’s where I live. Well, it’s suburbia, so I guess it’s never that bad. It’s all pollen-y, though. My allergies make me get all sneezy, especially in the summer. Is that gross? That’s gross.”  
  
“Hey, that’s human.” Mike tips their waitress and starts for the door. “Besides, Sneezy is my favorite dwarf.”  
  
It turns out Mike went to Chuck’s high school for a year, during which she inadvertently won the De-Lich the Park championship crown during her jog through the park, before transferring across the city. (“That was _you_?”) It turns out Mike spends her free time snowboarding in California and saving orphans from certain death in Africa, and it turns out Chuck really, really enjoys listening to her talk.  
  
Chuck decides Mike must be a real life Disney princess living incognito. _Must_ be.  
  
It also turns out Mike needs to work that afternoon, which leads Chuck full circle to: Mike is beautiful and Chuck is not.  
  
While initially nothing more than a simple fact in Chuck’s head, it quickly becomes a problem. Then, the third time Mike swings by Chuck’s perch on the sidelines during a breath’s break to ask her how she’s doing, Chuck says, “Doing great, Mikey,” and a problem becomes _the_ huge, insurmountable problem in Chuck’s life.  
  
It turns out Mike is beautiful to the core, through and through, and Chuck really likes the thought of hanging out with Mike, professionally or otherwise. The chances of a classy dame like Mike giving Chuck the time of day in this _otherwise_ scenario are—well, fairly high, taking Mike’s chronic niceness into consideration, but the point at hand is that Chuck does not exist in the same realm of being as Mikey Chilton or a potential friend of Mikey Chilton’s.  
  
Which is exactly what she so suddenly, so desperately wants to be.  
  
Yet the professional route of ascension into this realm of being was not without its flaws. At least, not without one main flaw: Chuck was no _model_ and Chuck was not model material. Whatever Just Rayon had seen in those ill-gotten portfolio photos must have been a trick of the light or something equally coincidental. Chuck turns away from the cameras obscuring most of Mike from her view to take a look at herself in a mirror to her right.  
  
She’s certainly tall enough, and she did always like her freckles. She bares her teeth. It’s never too late for a little cosmetic dentistry, is it? Pushing her bangs up and out of her eyes, she looks around herself at the assembly of picture perfect model types milling about. Be beautiful, be punctual, and smile (or look severe, or vacant, or whatever is asked for) at the cameras.  
  
How hard could it be? She was already scouted, which must count for something despite her initial reluctance and ignorance to the whole ordeal. All she had to do was keep with the program, and her completely ridiculous mentor Mikey Chilton would remain her completely ridiculous mentor.  
  
Which would be pretty cool, because Mikey Chilton is pretty cool.  
  
Chuck turns back to center stage just in time to watch Mike tilt her head to a tactically perfect angle while cameras click and flash. Her shoulders slump and she moves away from the mirrors near her. It wouldn’t be just hard, unless hard had suddenly become twins with _impossible_.  
  
  
  
Chuck expects Just Rayon to turn up when people start disappearing around the set, but no such thing happens and she braces herself for another trip in a taxi trap when she realizes she’s lost sight of Mike as well. “Not that I’d _expect_ Mikey to give me a ride. She’s probably got more important things to be doing in her free time, like liberating an oppressed country in the Middle East or saving some huskies from terrible weather in Siberia. Would’ve been nice to say—.”  
  
“Need a lift?”  
  
She startles, and maybe screams just a bit. When she turns, Mike is smiling and waving and at least pretending not to have heard.  
  
“I was just heading out. I can give you a ride somewhere if you need.”  
  
Chuck sidles on over as she steps out of the way of a few guys loading up a van. “Oh, hey, you’re sure that won’t be any trouble? You don’t have to go out of your way or anything. I think I see a cab down the street.”  
  
“No trouble at all. We’re parked right around the corner,” Mike says as she takes Chuck’s wrist to tug her into motion. “Where to?”  
  
“Uh.”  
  
“Rayon did organize a room for you, right?”  
  
Chuck snaps her fingers. “Yes! A hotel room. We dropped by earlier to drop off my things—I didn’t know I was supposed to bring things, so there wasn’t much to do, but—yes. I’ve got a room.”  
  
“Address?”  
  
“Uh.” Chuck blinks. Mike, turning back, blinks as well. Chuck blinks a second time for good measure. “I forgot.”  
  
Mike makes a funny little sound that Chuck doesn’t realize is a stifled laugh until she looks up at her, but before she can even start to feel completely horrible about herself and her traitorous memory, Mike shakes her head and smiles.  
  
“That’s great, actually. If you’ve got some free time, why don’t you come back to mine? I’m having a few friends over and we can talk shop, or hang out, without so many interruptions.”  
  
“This is your car?” Chuck says instead of _yes please that would be most excellent_. “Your car is a truck?”  
  
Mike laughs and pats the blue creature she stops next to. “This is Jacob’s. He’s heading out of town and needed it taken care of for the weekend. My baby’s back in Detroit. Come on, hop in.”  
  
“Why’s yours back in Detroit?” Chuck asks as she climbs up into the passenger seat, carefully, and buckles herself in, firmly.  
  
“I meant it when I said I’ve been meaning to get back for a while. This was a temporary gig, but—.” She shrugs, smiles, and pulls out _way_ too quickly for someone about to dive into New York traffic. “—but here I am.”  
  
Chuck hyperventilates quietly for a moment as she tries to decide whether she wants to ask _What’s calling you back to Detroit?_ or _What’s keeping you in New York?_ The question that ultimately comes out of her mouth is, “What’s where?”  
  
Mike quirks a neat, fine eyebrow in her general direction.  
  
“Oh, uh, that is to say—is something keeping you in New York? Or pulling you back to Detroit? I think I wanted to ask both and couldn’t decide what to say so—hey, does that Subaru up there look a bit too close to you?”  
  
Chuck’s knuckles go white against the seatbelt around her and Mike looks all around her for the SUV she’s talking about as though it isn’t _right in front of them_.  
  
“I thought you might be the nervous backseat driver type,” she says. Without giving Chuck a chance to argue that she isn’t in the backseat, thanks, Mike goes on, “The plan was pretty radically different than what I’m doing. My folks’ garage was wrecked pretty bad a few years ago. I wanted to do some restorations and take over the place.”  
  
“A garage? As in a repair shop? How’d you go from that to, you know, _this_?”  
  
“As I was _saying_ , milady Chuck the Interrupter,” Mike says, and laughs. She runs a yellow light that looked suspiciously reddish to Chuck. “A few years back, Jacob called up a favor. A real diva bailed on a charity show in Chicago and he wound up short a girl. I drove out, filled in, and got scouted. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but my life needed a new _everything_ by that point, and the first gig I was offered paid well enough to afford me rent in the city and a set of new spark plugs.”  
  
Mike makes a sharp turn and says _whoops_ under her breath while Chuck listens with baited breath that, for once, has nothing to do with the dangerous automobile she’s trusting her life to.  
  
“Then came another job, and friends, and I figured this was as good of a way as any to save up for those garage renovations I had planned. Four years later, I’m driving a spastic and blonde version of me, four years younger, down the streets of New York. Can’t complain, huh?”  
  
Chuck blinks a few times, rapid-fire style. “Oh, I’m _nothing_ like you.”  
  
Mike looks over with an expression Chuck places as wounded after a second’s thought.  
  
“Oh, hey, no! I don’t mean in a bad way. That was definitely a compliment.”  
  
“How’s that a compliment, Chuckles?”  
  
Chuck lets an awkward silence take his place riding shotgun as she sinks low in her seat before clearing her throat and eyeing the speedometer. “So, when you say your life, that’s code for your car? That’s pretty cool. I wish I had a car.”  
  
Mike allows the change in subject with little more than a knowing smile. “At that time? It was a pretty literal use of life, but once I head back to Detroit, you can bet your butt it’ll be code for my car.”  
  
“Yeah? And what’s your code life like, Mikey?”  
  
As Mike dissolves into a passionate spiel about her homegrown, hodgepodge baby, Chuck holds on tight and takes it all in.  
  
  
  
Mike’s apartment looks like the set of a TV show about the inconceivably rich. She apologizes for the mess as she picks her way through the IKEA living room set, hoovering up some dirty laundry and empty water bottles along the way, but Chuck is too busy gawking at the fact that there’s a baby grand (as in _piano_ ) next to the couch to hear.  
  
“Make yourself at home,” Mike says. Chuck pokes one of the massive houseplants, which is surprisingly real and pokes her right back with a stem that seems to spontaneously grow out of nowhere.  
  
“It’s not mine, actually.” Her voice is faint now, and when Chuck looks up, she notices her too cool host retreating into the kitchen. “Well, I rent it, but it comes pre-furnished, so it isn’t exactly my style.”  
  
Whatever it’s not, it _is_ complete with a convenient armchair that Chuck pretends to be a part of when Mike’s friends start to arrive. Dutch (which is not short for the Duchess, as Chuck learns loudly and at great length when she unwittingly asks if it might be) arrives with Texas (who wants to know if Chuck stands for anything and squints when Chuck asks, “As in short for Charlie or, uh, believes in saving the whales?”) and enough dog hair over their shoes that Chuck has to retreat to the bathroom to sneeze five times and take an allergy chill pill once introductions are completed.  
  
By the time she reemerges, there’s pizza on the table and a young man looking her in the eye. She squeaks.  
  
“Jules, this is Chuck,” Mike says the faraway land of the kitchen as he emerges with a few cans of pop. “Chuck, meet my good friend Julien Kane.”  
  
He smiles and Chuck shrinks. “Hi, pleased to meet you. I’ve been hearing a _lot_ about you today.”  
  
Chuck puts a _lot_ of effort into not repeating the sound that just came out of her mouth. Instead: “Kane?”  
  
To her credit, she does first shake the hand Julien offers.  
  
“Kane,” the others respond in unison—perhaps harmony.  
  
“My father, their lord and master,” Julien says, unfazed. “He mentioned you over dinner last week.”  
  
Mike comes closer to offer them each a glass. “Our megalomaniac lord and master. Like father, like son?”  
  
Julien sighs. “If only it weren’t so morally suspect to hit a lady.”  
  
“Try me, Jules. Chuck’ll defend my honor and my face.”  
  
And as much as Chuck would love to do that, she doesn’t think she would do any such things. Fortunately, her theory isn’t put to the test. They settle around the pizza with a spot in the circle for Chuck and, as promised, talk shop (as well as boys, girls, and weekend box office numbers of the latest indie comic book series turned Hollywood blockbuster). Dutch talks about potentially signing with Wilhelmina come the end of her contract because there she won’t be working with a thinly closeted white supremacist—here Julien apologizes. Texas, reading from a smartphone that’s too small for her hands, chews out Greenpeace for abandoning the whales in favor of polar bears, but she’s quickly distracted when Mike somehow cajoles Chuck into sharing the Best Of moments of last year’s De-Lich the Park event.  
  
While Texas and an exasperated, but polite, Julien splinter off to reenact the last of Chuck’s stories with the contents of their purses, Dutch takes a rain check on the festivities with the completely valid excuse of, “Roth needs to eat and shed some more on my feet, and then I’ll need sleep.”  
  
Mike lets Chuck follow her into the kitchen with half of the glasses and as Chuck sets each one down without cracking a single one, she can’t help but say, “This was really so much fun. I had a great time. Your friends are all impossibly cool.”  
  
“Hey, how about a smile, then?” Mike smiles and hip-checks Chuck, much more carefully than a bus might. “I’m glad we could show you a good time, but you look pretty glum there. Problem?”  
  
Chuck’s internal nodding manifests in a physical up-and-down of her head before she catches the motion and turns it into a shaking of her head. “No, no problem at all! Just going to miss you guys when I head on home, I think.”  
  
“Well, there’s a non-problem if I’ve ever heard one. We’ll just do this again the next time you’re in town. Now, I know I have a hard time keeping months straight sometimes, but I’m _sure_ it’s you’re off school for the summer. Why don’t you come back around when your schedule’s clear and give me a call after getting in some work?”  
  
“I just don’t think I see that happening.” Chuck swallows around the words, again a second too late to keep them from coming. “Not that I wouldn’t call you! I just don’t think I’ll be in town anytime soon.”  
  
Mike shuts off the tap almost as soon as she turns it on and sets the glass she means to clean back down in the sink, and then she turns her full, heavy, expectant attention onto Chuck. “Why not?”  
  
Chuck thinks a whimper would be the right sound to make at the moment, but she reconsiders and manages to form words. “Because I’m not a model.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Chuck blinks. Mike blinks right back.  
  
“Of course you’re not a model, but everyone starts somewhere.”  
  
Chuck feels her shoulders drop. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just, it was nice getting to see the city and meet everyone, but—come on, just look. Look at yourself. Then look at me.”  
  
Obligingly, Mike looks down at herself in the band shirt and sweatpants she’d changed into. Then, she looks at Chuck. “Yeah?”  
  
“I’m not _model gorgeous_ , Mikey! I’m not. I don’t look like you, or any of your completely awesome friends, and someone’s going to realize it, or probably has already realized it, and I’ll get booted right out of the industry and your life.”  
  
There’s a short pause in words and in actions, where even facial expressions go blank, before Mike gets that wounded look all over her face again.  
  
“You’re cute as heck, Chuckles. You know that, right?”  
  
Chuck’s freckles go nuclear.  
  
“And you’ve got every right and ability and talent to be here if you want to be. Do you want to be here?”  
  
Chuck thinks _duh_ and says, “Not really.” Then she blinks, repeats Mike’s question to herself, and thinks _wait, no, not really_. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”  
  
“You’re thinking about it now.”  
  
Chuck draws her brows down tight in concentration and scratches at the bridge of her nose where her bangs divorce. “I guess I don’t. This wasn’t really ever my dream. My friends got me into it and then when I got here, I didn’t know anything. I figured out real quick that I wanted to hang out with you and to stay around to do that, because you’re _awesome_ , but I never thought about doing this with my life and I don’t want—.”  
  
She stops, just in time, but too late to keep Mike from finishing, “You don’t want to lose four years doing something you never thought about doing.”  
  
The words come in volumes of understanding and Chuck feels instantly weak in the knees with gratitude. “Yeah. I mean, your life story wasn’t a fatalistic moral tale for me to learn from or anything, but yeah. I think that’s it, and I think I’m homesick?”  
  
“You should be,” Mike says. “From what you’ve talked about, you sound like you’ve got a pretty great group of friends back home. I might need to check you for a fever if you _weren’t_ feeling homesick.”  
  
“So I guess I’m going home.”  
  
Mike moves in Chuck’s periphery, but she doesn’t see where to (what with the very limited view her loose bangs and drooped head give her) until a careful hug is wrapped around her shoulders.  
  
“First thing tomorrow. We’ll get you to the airport in time for that flight you’ve got.”  
  
Chuck feels, or perhaps imagines, her breathing getting shallower by the second as Mike turns back to the sink. Grasping onto straws and this newfound friendship that seems to be dying, she says, “And maybe you’ll visit when you come back to Detroit?”  
  
The drizzle of the tap runs through the silence, broken every few seconds by the noise in the living room, until Mike shuts it off again. “Maybe I will.”  
  
“I mean—.” Chuck goes on, her filter abandoning her for the night. “I mean, you seem like a responsible saver and I just bet if you shop around a little those renovations won’t be nearly as pricey as you think. You’d probably be able to come back and do what you always wanted, right?”  
  
Mike, without looking at her, says, “Probably.”  
  
Chuck clicks her teeth together as she shuts her mouth.  
  
“Look, hey, it’s not that I don’t want to.” Grabbing a dishcloth near her, Mike wipes down the spatter pattern of water on the counters. “It’s funny, you showing up from Detroit just as my contract’s running out. Each year Kane puts a fresh one in front of me, and each year I sign it thinking the garage will wait. There’s a way he spins it that makes the glamour of this appealing, even though I _know_ better, and—.”  
  
She stops. The smile returns.  
  
“I think that’s a story for another time.”  
  
Chuck thinks about pushing harder. She thinks about her very first impression of Mikey Chilton: groomed to the bone to look like New York, but still _feels like Detroit_. She thinks, maybe selfishly, Mike belongs there and wants to say so, but an ill-timed crash and celebratory “ _Texas, baby!_ ” from the living room pulls Mikey away before Chuck can open her mouth.  
  
She decides it’s for the best and, when invited, resumes her perch on the armchair to spectate (it turns out Texas’s celebrations were somewhat premature, and round two was slated to begin by eight) for the rest of the night.  
  
  
  
Julien escorted Texas home after her third unsuccessful attempt to choke him out with a pair of gun-chucks she fashioned out of a handful of hair ties and two small water pistols Mike found for them somewhere in the house. Mike left a strangely soothing episode of Jeopardy on TV as she went to rinse out their glasses and stow away the leftovers for a rainy day, and the next time Chuck opens her eyes, the sun’s up and a heavy coat’s pulled up high over her shoulders.  
  
She falls off of the couch with a sharp yelp. By the time she detangles herself from the squid-like arms of the jacket blanketing her, Mike’s appeared with two mugs and a large manila envelope in hand.  
  
“Did I wake you? Your flight’s not for a few hours.”  
  
Chuck sits up to receive the mug she’s offered and sniffs the hot chocolate before sighing in pre-conscious bliss. “I didn’t fall asleep here.”  
  
Mike grins and sits herself down on the little available couch space as Chuck pulls her legs into herself. “Try again, Chuckles.”  
  
Chuck blinks. A marshmallow floating in her cup hits her nose and startles her awake. “Oh. Oh, what I was trying to say was, I didn’t mean to fall asleep here.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got plenty of space here. Also got something for you. Rayon brought it over when I mentioned you were camping out here.”  
  
The manila envelope appears under her nose as soon as Chuck’s finished wiping it clean. She blinks again before forgoing her mug for the curiously unmarked package instead.  
  
“What’s this?”  
  
Mike waits for her to work the clip open and pull out one of several photo sheets inside. “It’s your comp card. Normally, once you’re signed, your agent would send those out to find work for you. Four portfolio shots and all the necessary contact information. Those are some extras for you to keep.”  
  
Chuck peers into the folder and finds a dozen copies of the sheet she’s holding. The four snaps Ruby had apparently deemed good enough to shop out to her targeted agency stare back at her, still frames of her queenly, pseudo-public apology. The memory of the melodramatic, but admittedly entertaining, afternoon strikes hard against the homesickness nerve brewing in the pit of Chuck’s stomach.  
  
When Mike leans over to sneak a peek, Chuck feels considerably worse. She won’t miss the morning of wallowing in her newfound inferiority complex, but she suspects she’ll be periodically thinking about the awesome friend Mikey Chilton would have been for the rest of her life.  
  
Chuck thinks, _I know we just met, but I think I’m going to miss you crazy much_.  
  
Mike says, “Hang on.”  
  
She’s gone for a minute, then two, and Chuck wonders (irrationally, she’ll admit) if that was some strange, glamorous, New York version of goodbye. Then Mike’s face appears in four angles in front of hers and Chuck goes a little cross-eyed blinking at the glossy sheet of paper hanging in front of her.  
  
“Trade you one? These are old photos, but I’ve kept my old number from Detroit. You could give me a call if you ever find yourself in the city again, or I could ring you up when I get back into town.”  
  
Chuck drops her head back to look up towards Mike. “ _When_ you get back?”  
  
Mike nods. “When.”  
  
On the plane to Detroit, Chuck (having forgotten her mild lactose intolerance in the presence of a delicious serving of hot chocolate) will suffer of spot of indigestion during the worst of the turbulence, but she’ll unfold her table and prop Mikey’s comp card up and think _when_.


End file.
